


i'm sick of the things i do when i'm nervous

by circumlocute



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternia is Terrible, Canon Compliant, Domestic, Food Issues, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Abuse, Post-Canon, Slice of Life, pesterlogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2018-11-02 16:50:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10948677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circumlocute/pseuds/circumlocute
Summary: Two idiots poke at recovery with a stick.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've wanted to read something about Dave and Karkat having to work at recovering from their various traumas on Earth C for a while, so I went ahead and did the thing myself.  
> The title is from the song "Everything is Alright" by Motion City Soundtrack.

\--turntechGodhead  [TG] began pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] \--

TG: dude come on

TG: what heinous goddamn stains are you wrangling

TG: shit better be dried in worse than the fucking sahara for it to take three hours

TG: i want to go to bed

CG: YOU COULD, I DON’T KNOW...GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP ALREADY AND STOP MESSAGING ME?

CG: MAYBE IF MY ASSCHEEK WOULD STOP VIBRATING TO ALERT ME THAT I HAVE A NEW STRING OF INANITY TO READ, I’D BE DONE ALREADY.

TG: thats some hot bs youre serving and we both know it

TG: i fell asleep on laundry day last week and you didnt come in until like two and a half hours later

TG: i know you never fucking sleep but you could at least not sleep in bed

TG: or is it too hard to resist my supple nubile human bod when im asleep and cannot fight against your lecherous ways

CG: DUDE, I’M NOT TRYING TO AVOID YOUR SWEATY WILES. DESPITE MY BETTER JUDGEMENT, I DO *ACTUALLY* LIKE IT WHEN YOU DRAPE YOUR DISGUSTING MAMMAL HUSK ACROSS ME WHILE YOU SLEEP.

TG: gay

CG: STFU.

CG: I’M SERIOUSLY JUST DOING LAUNDRY, THOUGH. YOU’RE WELCOME TO COME DOWN AND WATCH ME DO CHORES BUT WE ALL KNOW YOU CAN’T HANDLE STAYING UP ALL DAY LIKE I CAN.

TG: maybe ill come down there and piggyback around on you

TG: snore in your ear while youre separating your grays from your dark grays

TG: seriously man it doesnt even take me this long to do mine and i actually HAVE whites to worry about what are you doing

CG: I AM *DOING* *LAUNDRY.* BETTER THAN YOU, OBVIOUSLY

CG: BUT WE ALREADY KNEW THAT, BECAUSE YOU SMELL LIKE SWEATY ASS PRETTY MUCH CONSTANTLY

TG: is the implication supposed to be that you smell so much better cause youre down there reinventing detergent or whatever

TG: so soon you forget the great deodorant conversation of the early aughts

TG: i promise we have enough detergent scientists in the world it isnt your calling

TG: dont leave me for tide

CG: YES, THE SLIPPERY TEXTURE OF DETERGENT IS SO REMINISCENT OF TROLL REPRODUCTION THAT I JUST CAN’T CONTROL MYSELF AROUND IT.

CG: I’M FILLING A SUDSY PAIL AS WE SPEAK. OF COURSE, YOU’LL ONLY FIGURE IT OUT WHEN MY DESCENDANTS CRAWL OUT OF THE CAVERNS SMELLING OF LINEN AND ~SPRING BREEZE~

CG: INSECURE MUCH?

TG: defensive much

TG: im just saying it takes up a lot of time

TG: i could do the laundry if you wanted to fulltime trash duty

CG: NO, I DO MY CLOTHES THE *RIGHT* WAY. I DON’T NEED YOU SHRINKING EVERYTHING AND FORCING ME TO WALK AROUND IN A CROP TOP THAT USED TO BE DECENT APPAREL.

TG: well now i gotta

CG: I’LL BE DONE IN FIFTEEN MINUTES. GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP BEFORE I COME UP THERE AND SMOTHER YOU INTO UNCONSCIOUSNESS.

TG: im drooling into my pillow as we speak

TG: dreams of scantily clad karkats dance through my head

\--turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] \--

Dave puts his phone on the nightstand next to his shades and sighs. It’s...whatever. Every weekend, Karkat does his laundry like clockwork (heh), which. It's fine, but it'd be finer if it didn't take fucking forever. Dave lets his go a little longer, usually, but at least it means he isn't wading through piles of crusty troll underwear to get to his shit. Still, though. Much as Dave won't admit it, he really does prefer falling asleep with Karkat to curl up against. But he’s not a _baby,_ he isn't going to pitch a fit about it. Dude needs clean clothes, yo. Dave turns off the light and flops back down onto his bed, eyes closed.

It's an indeterminate amount of time (tick tick tick, thirty minutes, fuck you brain Dave is _not_ listing the seconds) later when Karkat wakes him up by climbing into bed. Dave always wakes up at shit like that. You don't exactly rest easy when you could wake up with a sword pointed at your nose and a demon puppet on your chest.

“Thought you were coming in, like, fifteen minutes ago, bro?” Dave mumbles, lifting his head off the pillow just enough to squint at Karkat's vague silhouette. The hazy blob shrugs. There's a brief rustle of sheets and the mattress sinks as Karkat gets situated. Once he's stopped moving, Dave scoots a little closer and fits his head into the crook of Karkat's neck. Yesss, come to daddy, Karkat is the best space heater and only complains sometimes when Dave puts his frosty toes on his legs. Truly he is a saint.

Karkat reaches up to run his fingers through Dave’s hair and makes a chattering noise Dave has learned to recognize as bugspeak for pensive.

“There was a really stubborn stain. I practically had to rip the cotton fibers apart at the fucking molecular level to get it out. I’m pretty sure my clothes are just trying to spite me at this point? Just...fucking irrevocably merging their atoms with any detritus that happens to linger too close. Abandon all soap, ye who enter here.”

Okay, Dave can't help but snicker at that.

“Pretty sure nothing can withstand your foamy onslaught, man. Little dust particles screaming in terror as you bring out the holy washboard. You hear their high pitched screams? That is the sound of most righteous cleanliness.”

Karkat laughs under his breath and shushes Dave (who is more than happy to go back to sleep, really; you don’t maintain looks like these without some fuckin’ beauty rest). (He makes a mental note to bring up the laundry thing later).

In the evening, Dave wakes up to find Karkat already awake, fucking around on his phone in bed. He isn’t sure if it’s a troll thing or a Karkat thing, but Karkat’s insomnia is a whole ‘nother beast compared to the human version. Jebus.

“You sleep at all?” Dave asks, propping himself up on one elbow to grab his shades and turn on the lamp. Hey, man, he already sleeps around Karkat. That’s fucking progress. Allow a dude his vices. He’ll take them off again later, when he isn’t still half-awake and not entirely in control of his motor functions slash expressions.

“What? Yeah, a little. Figured I’d stay in bed and make up for lost time, so you didn’t start pining for me two hours after getting up. What would the tabloids say if your pusher gave out from sheer despondent loneliness while you’re running errands?”

Ah, yes, Karkatese for ‘I wanted to rub up against your prone body and maybe stare at you while you slept’ which is, in turn, Davelish for ‘I wanted to snuggle.’ Romance is a beautiful thing.

“Deicide or devotion? Newly resurrected Knight of Time tells all!” Dave says, sitting up properly and grinning at Karkat. “Maybe we can get some breakfast before I keel over from starvation instead?”

Karkat nods and stretches his arms over his head. If Dave ogles a little, it’s just because he’s still getting used to the subtle differences in troll musculature structure. After three years. Yes, officer, this is a rock solid alibi he _swears._

* * *

 

Breakfast is a pretty low-effort affair. Karkat’s still wide awake (ugh, can’t have slept more than two hours tops), but Dave would sooner serve up a plate of his own fingernails than let him cook. Dude spends more time staring at the recipe and flipping his shit about the possibility of accidentally fucking it up than he does making the food. It’s a goddamn travesty.

That said, Dave’s slouched on the couch with a bowl of lucky charms; he’s making at least some effort not to just pick the marshmallows out and leave the rest. Waste not want not, even if the actual cereal tastes like decade-old pencil shavings glued together. Besides, he needs the nutrition. Or something.

Karkat’s curled up in a nearby armchair with a bag of nasty little sugar-coated dried-up beetles. Like always, he’s meticulously plucking their gross, tiny legs off and eating those before snarfing down the rest. Why. How he manages to eat anything will forever be a mystery beyond Dave’s understanding. (That’s a lie, he knows Karkat only gets weird with some food. The bugs, popcorn, and some dessert pastries will be dissected, but pizza’s fair game unless there’s a topping he doesn’t like on it).

Dave turns the TV on to some mindless background noise and pushes his cereal around the bowl. After he eats, he’ll have to get out of his pajamas (Disney princesses, yo. They’re the shit, and for bonus ridiculousness these gals are all trolls, so they’ve got two great sets of racks and teeth that could kill a dude, all screenprinted across his chest). What clean clothes does he have, actually? ...Oh, shit, there’s something he needs to talk to Karkat about. The dreaded ‘why does your laundry take so long, you fucking weirdo’ conversation. Dave is the president of good communications, inc, and he is issuing a fucking executive order.

“So…” he tries, cautiously. Leaves the TV’s volume up so they both have an out.

Karkat looks up at him, not too fast not too slow, all feigned casualness. “Yeah?” Dave can see the anxiety in the crease of his brow, the way, whoopsie, he crushes the next beetle instead of plucking it apart.

Fuck, he probably thinks Dave’s trying to break up with him or something equally paranoid. How are they both so bad at this? It should not be possible for two dudes to contain this much fail and still consider their relationship successful.

“Wanna go out somewhere tonight?” Nice save, dipshit. Oh, well. The president of good communication is going to take a brief leave of absence, that’s all. He’s probably overreacting, anyway. It’s not like Dave has a whole lot of experience with housework. “We can go make fun of whatever’s in theaters right now. I think they’ve got something with giant robots and huge fuckin’ tits flopping everywhere. They know they gotta keep the audience engaged ‘cause if you give them two seconds they’ll just pass out in the chair from sheer boredom, and that’s just a head injury and a lawsuit _waiting_ to happen.”

Karkat snorts a laugh and raises one eyebrow. “Are the rumblespheres on the robots? I mean, why not just combine your genre conventions to save up on screen space? Use the rest for product placement--or, or! Consider this: strap them in something lacy with a prominent logo, and there you fucking go. We don’t even have to use the other 90% of the screen _at all.”_

Dave snickers. “Now that’s what I call economical.”

* * *

 

They do go see the movie, and it is every bit as terrible as Dave could have hoped. They lean across the bucket of popcorn (that Karkat is predictably picking at) to whisper criticisms at each other, and Karkat bitches about butter and grease when Dave grabs his hand but doesn’t let go. It’s pretty nice, all things considered. Definitely better than movie dates on the meteor. A dude just _can’t_ get in the mood with Dane Cook’s disgusting muppet monster face looming ominously in the background like some sort of warning about the fate of mankind. It’s a law of the universe!

Turns out Dave can _absolutely_ get in the mood with Karkat curling his lip and wiping his greasy hand on the front of Dave’s shirt as they’re leaving the theater, though. It must be true love. He tries to drool in Karkat’s hair, Karkat threatens to bite his tongue off in retaliation, and by the time they make it home Dave’s suggesting that Karkat do something better with his tongue. Or mouth in general. Dave’s not picky, man.

Of course, it’s just his luck that a moment (twenty-seven and a half seconds) after they get inside, Karkat breaks away and starts to fiddle with the lock on the front door. It's a good idea; safety is not something to kid around with and Dave knows this better than anyone, but he swears he hears the lock click at least six times before Karkat finally gives the door a firm tug and turns back around. Dave’s boner is so dead.

“My boner is so dead, dude. Get out the shovels and start a-diggin’ because it's time to lay this limp fucker to rest. Not even two separate bathtubs could bring him back from the beyond.”

Karkat gives him a strange look that's mostly baffled amusement, with a spicy undertone of something like embarrassment. Or shame? Whatever it is, it says loud and clear that he knows he just locked the door six fucking times. Dave kind of feels bad for the death of his dick now. The mood has been fucking _cremated_ , though, and trying to perform cock necromancy is just going to send Karkat down another self-loathing spiral.

“You, uh, want to snuggle while we watch our failing sexual prowess start to decay under the sun, then?” Karkat rubs at the back of his neck and worries his lip. Fuck though, he’s cute, and Dave hates seeing him look all deflated and miserable. Not to mention he is always down to snuggle Karkat; he’s warm and makes the best pillow, all soft with a tantalizing hint of muscle underneath. Choice.

“Hell yeah, dude. You know I’m all kinds of about rubbing up on dat bod, just lemme stash the snacks.” No sense letting perfectly good movie popcorn go to waste, man. Put it in a ziplock and it’ll be fine.

Once Dave’s done that, he walks into the living room to see Karkat already curled up on the couch with some of the blankets they keep around just for this reason.

“I’m coming in,” Dave calls, making sure Karkat knows it's him and not, like, a burglar before he vaults over the back of the couch and worms his way into Karkat’s lap.

“You are made entirely out of elbows and every single one of them is jabbing me,” says Karkat, who is totally not smiling from beneath his blanket cocoon.

“Love you too, honey.” Dave winks and plants a kiss right on Karkat’s lips when he sputters. He might be a weird, neurotic alien, but fuck if he isn't the perfect counterpart to Dave’s own weird, neurotic bullshit. And right now? Life is damn good.

* * *

 

The rest of the week goes pretty smoothly. Or, really, as smoothly as shit can go in the Strider-Vantas household. There’s no more tragic dong funerals, at least, and John even comes over to play video games instead of sulking in what Dave has lovingly dubbed his depression cave. The worst thing that happens is Dave’s three day food poisoning adventure from eating pizza he’d left out overnight, but he recovered just fine. Karkat’s flip-out over it was more stressful than the actual “being sick” experience.

The laundry thing is still on Dave’s mind, though. He figures that’s probably what was going on a bunch of the times Karkat disappeared for varyingly long stretches of time on the meteor, but Dave wanted to let a dude have room to be alone, so he’d never checked. It wasn’t like the laundry room was a choice hang-out locale; normally he’d enjoy some of his _own_ alone time or pester Rose. But living together is different. Yeah, sure, they shared a space on the meteor for three years and they got a _fuck_ of a lot closer, but there are some things you just don’t notice when you’re also living with four girls and a clown.

Now that it’s just the two of them, Karkat’s less obvious quirks are sticking out like a sore thumb. This thumb is bright purple and about the size of a banana, is what Dave’s saying. It doesn’t make him like Karkat any less--his heart still feels like it’s trying to smash his ribs into a fine powder when Karkat gives him one of his _looks_ \--but he’s worried about him.

Dave thinks about it, does some googling, and almost talks himself out of it on a near-daily basis. But something’s up, man; Karkat's acting a little different, a little cautious. When Dave (finally, stupid stupid dumb) realizes it's probably because _Karkat's_ noticed something's up, that makes the decision for him. The president of good communication is back and better than ever, baby. They are going to Have A Talk.

‘Course, he's too much of a weenie to start it in person. Words are hard enough through text, Dave doesn't need his motor mouth betraying him and fucking everything up. Nah, man, nah. He’ll message him while neither of them are doing anything important, and then they can both gravitate towards a shared space and continue in person. It is a time-tested method, yo.

\--turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering carcinoGeneticist  [CG] \--

TG: put down whatever youre doing my beautiful buttslave

TG: somethings just come up and it requires you to full ass this convo just as hard as i am

TG: grinding your buttcheeks against the screen with the force of a thousand stampeding elephants

CG: OK, I’LL TAKE THIS INCREDIBLY LOW-QUALITY BAIT. AT THIS POINT IT’S PROBABLY JUST A HOOK YOU’RE DANGLING IN FRONT OF ME, LIKE

CG: “SEE THE METAL BARBS? THEY’RE DELICIOUS I PROMISE.”

CG: BUT HEY! IT’S SHINY AND I’M DUMB, I’LL BITE. WHAT’S UP?

TG: ok soooo

TG: this is going to sound whiny as fuck like oh dave cant handle any aspect of domesticity without flipping off the handle and into the sky

TG: there he goes never to be seen again

CG: I’LL ONLY MAKE FUN OF THE STUPID STUFF, WHICH FYI DOES NOT INCLUDE YOUR EMOTIONAL CONSTIPATION OR VAGUE AND NEBULOUS COMPLAINTS ABOUT DOMESTICITY

CG: DO YOU WANT TO MOVE OUT? IT’S ALRIGHT, I MEAN, IT’S BASICALLY EXACTLY MY OLD HIVE AND I KNOW THERE’S GOT TO BE INSANE CULTURE CLASH, SO IF YOU WANNA GO LIVE WITH JOHN OR SOMETHING I’M NOT GOING TO CLING TO YOUR ANKLES

TG: what no

TG: i like your stupid house and i like your stupid face i wanna stay

CG: OH, THANK GOD

TG: its more like

TG: theres some stuff you do that youve probably always done but i didnt notice on account of hurricane vriska and im worried about like

TG: your ~internal state~

TG: this isnt me trying to be like

TG: what youre doing is harmless but it annoys me so stop btw im like legit a little worried even if saying what im worried about sounds really dumb

CG: OK, CONSIDER THIS: SAY IT AND THEN I WILL DECIDE IF IT IS DUMB. I KNOW IT’S A RADICAL CONCEPT, BUT WE HAVE SCIENTIFIC DATA TO PROVE THAT SAYING THINGS BEFORE JUDGING THEM IS BETTER FOR ACTUALLY GETTING STUFF DONE!

CG: UNLESS YOU WANTED TO SIT WITH YOUR THUMB UP YOUR ASS, I GUESS

TG: my thumb is up my ass 100% of the time

TG: but ok you have a point let me just

TG: i am worried

TG: about why youre so weird about your laundry

CG: THAT IS PRETTY DUMB.

TG: see i told you

TG: but you never let anyone see and you sit in the laundry room until the wash cycle is done and it takes way longer for you to do it than i take

TG: and no im not using time powers on my chores

TG: i just wanna know what youre getting up to in there and maybe help you speed up the process cause i think it stresses you out

TG: and i have a minor ulterior motive about wanting my pre bedtime snuggles back but thats less of a deal

CG: HM

TG: whats hm mean

CG: IT MEANS HM!

CG: IT MEANS SHUT UP AND LET ME THINK

TG: abouttt

CG: WELL, I MEAN, I’M A LITTLE WORRIED ABOUT YOU, TOO. SO.

TG: what no im fine i do my chores within a reasonable amount of time

CG: YEAH, SEE, THAT’S KIND OF HOW I IMAGINED YOU’D TAKE IT, ALBEIT WITHOUT THE REFERENCES TO MY HIVEWORK HABITS.

CG: AND THEN YOU GAVE YOURSELF FOOD POISONING AND I FOUND A MOLDY HALF-EATEN NOODLE CUP IN THE CLOSET.

TG: oh that

TG: i just forgot about that and didnt want to waste perfectly good pizza man

CG: NO, SHITNUB, IT WAS NOT *PERFECTLY GOOD* IF EATING IT MADE YOU EXPEL YOUR INTESTINES, TIED UP IN FUN SHAPES FOR EXTRA ENTERTAINMENT VALUE

CG: YOU SINGULAR FUCKING MONUMENT TO IDIOCY

CG: SO HERE IS THE DEAL, TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT:

CG: YOU CAN NAG ME ABOUT MY PERFECTLY NORMAL LAUNDRY PREFERENCES, IF I CAN NAG YOU ABOUT YOUR TENDENCY TO PLAY NUTBEAST WITH PERISHABLES.

TG: damn you drive a hard bargain

TG: but ok

TG: lets hash out the contract on the couch tho all that butt talk earlier put me in the mood for some choice gropage

CG: ALRIGHT, I’M DOWNSTAIRS ANYWAY SO I GUESS I CAN TOLERATE YOUR INSATIABLE NEED TO TOUCH MY ASS.

TG: yessssss

TG: omw

  
\--turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG]\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! If you have any questions about their various brainbugs please let me know, although I can say that questions like "why is Karkat weird about laundry" will be answered in the narrative if you'll bear with me, haha. Next chapter will be Karkat's POV, going through about this same period in time, only we get to see the stuff Dave gets up to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, this chapter includes a character vomiting and typical Strider/Vantas style extended metaphors about vomit, so tread lightly if that squicks you.

Karkat's a pretty easy-going dude. The sky is also bright green and the moon is shaped like a middle finger. That said! He'd like to think he's handling shit remarkably well. Shit, of course, can refer to any number of things up to and including actual excrement, but in this case he's talking about his boyfriend’s (!!!) weird fucking eating habits. Or...not-eating habits. What the fuck ever.

Dave has stashed two (2) bags of shitty cheese chips, five (5) small bottles of apple juice, and one (1) soggy lump of something Karkat suspects was once perhaps an orange in the hall closet. Fucking...why. Like, yeah, okay, Karkat knew that Dave hoarded stuff on the meteor. Sometimes his mattress would crinkle like cellophane and Dave would yank out a bag of alchemized garbage to stash elsewhere. But that was when food was an _issue_ , and even then he never hid fruit!

That’s what bothers him the most, really. Dave squirrels stuff away for later that day and forgets it (because he’s either bouncing between a hundred things or focusing so hard on one that he disregards everything else), and then it’s two weeks later. That shit _stinks_ like rotten ass left to ferment in the bowels of Karkat’s personal hell, which it pretty much is.

After Karkat gets the rubber gloves and disposes of the sodden former-orange (double bagged to make sure none of the fumes escape), he settles down on the couch with his husktop. _Sure,_ he could go get Dave in person, but. Eugh. Trying to have a coherent conversation with him is like trying to castrate an angry musclebeast. ‘Sides, Karkat can hear the sounds of music coming from upstairs; Dave is in The Zone and he’d rather not “jack his mojo” by busting in with his bitching. No. His bitching will remain entirely digital, where it belongs. It’s easier for Dave just to ignore the stupid shit online, too, which is pretty great given Karkat’s complete inability to stop blabbering like an idiot for more than five minutes. It’s his only talent.

\--carcinoGeneticist  [CG] began trolling turntechGodhead  [TG] \--

CG: MUCH LIKE A CROWD OF HUMANS LURKING IN THE DARK FOR THEIR ACQUAINTANCE ON HIS WRIGGLING DAY, I FOUND A VERY SPECIAL SURPRISE WAITING FOR ME THIS FINE EVENING! I SUSPECT IT WAS YOUR DOING

CG: BECAUSE, LET ME TELL YOU, THIS SHIT WAS HIDDEN AWAY LIKE IT WAS THE LAST PUTRID SOURCE OF SUSTENANCE ON THIS GODFORSAKEN PLANET, WITH THE DARK SEASON HOT ON YOUR HEELS. 

CG: OR COLD ON YOUR HEELS I GUESS, THAT’S NOT THE POINT. THE POINT IS I WENT TO GO GET CLEAN SHEETS AND HAD MY SNIFFNODE ASSAULTED WITH A STENCH SO FOUL IT CAN ONLY BE DESCRIBED IN HUSHED WHISPERS OVER A POST-APOCALYPTIC CAMPFIRE.

CG: FUCK METEORS, *THIS SMELL* BROUGHT FORTH THE END TIMES.

TG: what the fuck did you find in the closet

TG: im almost afraid to find out

TG: kind of wondering when this unique musk is gonna waft its way towards my room and give me a whiff

CG: IT IS A MYSTERY TO SCIENCE AND GOD ALIKE. PERSONALLY, I THINK IT WAS SOME SORT OF CITRUS ONCE, BEFORE ITS UNDEATH

CG: TUCKED SAFELY IN THE BEDDING YOU INSISTED ON HAVING, LIKE A BEAUTIFUL FEATHERBEAST EGG IN A NEST. LEAKING ITS FLUIDS ALL OVER EVERYTHING IT TOUCHED. 

TG: gross

CG: IT WAS POSITIVELY VILE AND I BLAME YOU

TG: thats fair i guess youre not really one to stick fruit weird places and forget about it

TG: but im a busy man its hard to keep track of the trail of snacks i leave behind

TG: its like a game now

TG: whats this in my desk drawer aw yeah its some chips thanks past dave you went hungry when you forgot where you put these but it was not in vain

TG: for now i feast thanks to your sacrifice

TG: so what did you do with the orange from the black lagoon

CG: I SENT IT TO THE DARK AND FORBIDDEN REALM CALLED “THE GARBAGE, WHERE IT BELONGS,” DUH. 

TG: damn i was kind of morbidly fascinated with the idea of this hell fruit

TG: wanted to maybe come get a look at it myself

TG: this is the best day of my life i say as i kneel next to the porcelain throne and pay tribute with the remains of my lunch

TG: this odor was too powerful for mere men

TG: and yet it beckons

CG: OH, DON’T WORRY. KNOWING YOUR RECENT TRACK RECORD, I’M SURE THERE WILL BE COUNTLESS FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES TO OBSERVE FOODSTUFF IN VARIOUS STATES OF DECAY. OF THIS I HAVE NO DOUBT

CG: MY DOUBT HAS PLUNGED WITHOUT WARNING INTO THE NEGATIVES, CAUSING THE DOUBT MARKET TO CRASH AND THE LITTLE DOUBT PEOPLE TO WORK THEMSELVES UP INTO A DESPERATE (IF SKEPTICAL) FRENZY. 

TG: fucking tragic

TG: hey check this out

TG: rottenfruitismyfetish.wav

TG: working title ofc but i really like the potential to work in a couple fruit jokes

CG: YOU’D THINK AFTER THIS LONG I WOULD *START* TO UNDERSTAND HUMANITY’S BIZARRE AND OBSCURE SEXUALITY REFERENCES, BUT I GUESS EVEN THAT’S ASKING TOO MUCH. 

CG: I’LL GIVE IT A LISTEN ONCE IT DOWNLOADS.

TG: awesome

\--carcinoGeneticist  [CG] ceased trolling turntechGodhead  [TG] \--

Karkat does listen to it once it finishes downloading, and for something Dave obviously shat out in record time (or maybe he just took whatever he was working on and named it something topical?) it’s pretty good. Karkat’s past the days of loudly declaring how much he hates Dave’s music. He is a grown-ass mature troll and he can admit Dave has some serious skill, _even if_ he decides to use it to compose songs about moldering oranges. (Fucking disgusting. Maybe next time he'll compose a sonnet about fossilized string cheese). Karkat opens up an ebook he downloaded recently, and taps his foot along as he reads.

* * *

 

The next day, Dave takes him to the movies. They go out on dates a lot; neither of them could cook a balanced meal if their lives depended on it, so they support local business and have dinner around town a lot. Or they order in, when neither of them wants to go through the effort of putting on pants. There’s something really magical about eating food out of a cardboard box in your underwear, Karkat figures, especially when there’s someone else in _his_ underwear slurping lo mein next to you.

 _Anyway._ So, they go on dates a lot, but that doesn’t mean that Karkat’s pusher doesn’t start hammering every time he’s reminded that Dave still wants him around. Especially now; things have been kind of weird, and it’s at least mostly Karkat’s fault. He’s trying not to be a walking case of nookrash about the food hoarding, but it’s annoying as shit to find food only identifiable by its immortal packaging stinking up the respiteblock. So Karkat’s a little testy. And he thinks Dave can tell, because he’s acting sort of different.

But...if he’s still tolerating Karkat’s presence enough to take him to the movies, it can’t be _that_ bad. It’s fine. Karkat is going to enjoy what he’s got right now, and freak out about it later when Dave’s asleep. His plan is foolproof.

* * *

 

The evening after that, Karkat’s tamped down his worries well enough that he manages to sleep a whole five uninterrupted hours. It might’ve been more, but Dave wakes him up in his mad dash to puke somewhere that isn’t ‘on Karkat’s face or body.’

Karkat follows Dave into the ablutionblock, rubs his back while he heaves into the load gaper, and tries not to hyperventilate. Emphasis on the trying part. Success is another matter entirely, but he’s working on it.

“Oh my god, are you okay? Don’t answer that, I know you’re puking and I’d really rather not have you aspirate your own vomit because even if it’s not Just or Heroic dying still sucks, and do you really want to make me haul your corpse out of the bathroom so I can clean up while you resurrect? No, you don’t, and you know I would because I’m the undisputed king of boyfriend island, so don’t even _think_ \--”

“Karkat,” Dave looks up at him with watery eyes and manages to flip him off. It must not be life-threatening, then. Karkat sighs in relief, and Dave starts talking again. “Do me a favor. Shut the fuck up and hold my hair. Please.”

“I--yeah, yeah, but if you get puke on me I promise I’ll personally grind your own feces into every article of clothing you own. I am not remotely in the vicinity of fucking around. I knew how to fuck around, once, but it was so long ago I’ve forgotten the _meaning_ of the words. It’s all just a pointless, incessant waste of nonsense noise to me. ...Which, coincidentally, is what I’m doing now. God fucking damn it.” 

Dave snickers for a second before he’s emptying the contents of his stomach into the gaper again, and Karkat scrambles to make himself useful. There’s, well, Dave doesn’t exactly have a lot of hair _to_ hold, just his bangs. How the fuck does he think he’s going to get puke on his _bangs?_ Karkat decides maybe Dave’s disoriented from waking up sick, but he’s still the king of boyfriend island. He’ll hold Dave’s hair so good he’ll spontaneously heal. Fuck yeah.

(Fuck).

Karkat shifts in place, combs his fingers through Dave’s hair, and chirps reassuringly at him even though he doesn’t really understand what it means. When it looks like he’s finally done, Karkat herds him back to bed and goes to get a bucket (ugh) in case of more puke, and a glass of water. Goddamn assmunch throws a fit, too, like he’s in any position to be complaining about Karkat taking care of him.

“Drink this,” Karkat says when he comes back with the glass, “ _slowly._ I don’t want to scrub vomit off this comforter, thank you very much. If you do have to hurl again try and get it in the bucket, it might be an affront to decency but at least it’s easier to clean up.”

“Dude, I’m fine. It was my own dumb ass that got sick, I’m not _dying._ You don’t need to lusus me, man. I’ve been taking care of my ills on my own for ages, I’m practically a fuckin’ doctor with how many wounds I tended. That’s me, Dave Strider, M.D.”

“Yeah, well, I want to. So get used to it and _stop_ making it weird by calling me your lusus, I really didn’t need that mental image for someone I’m concupiscent with, you abhorrent sack of bile.” Karkat’s scowling, as usual, but his tone is soft.

He can’t be blamed for being gentle, okay! There’s, uh, something really pitiable about Dave insisting he can take care of himself. And Karkat knows Dave _can,_ and maybe illness is more of a pale trope anyway, but. They’re not doing quadrants, it’s been about a sweep since they started dating and Karkat has _finally_ stopped trying to decide whether he felt flush or pale or pitch at any given moment. So he wants to take care of his fucking human-style boyfriend, and he has every right to. If Dave _really_ minded, he’d be doing that closed-off I-have-no-emotions-I’m-so-cool thing, anyway.

Although, he’s not really a mind reader, so...

“If you seriously want me to leave you alone, I will. I could find some errands to run so you can wallow in your misery in peace, probably.”

“Aw, dude, don’t make me fucking beg.” Dave scoots over to make room for Karkat on the bed, and sprawls in an effort to look as pitiful and frail as possible. “I’m just letting you know you don’t _have_ to waste your night on me, if you don’t really want to.”

God, they’re both kind of useless, aren’t they? Can’t fucking communicate without fifteen layers of nonsense to protect their spun-glass egos. Karkat snorts and climbs onto the bed, handing Dave the bucket in case he has anything left to hack up.

“Waste my night as opposed to what? If you weren’t sick, I’d just yell at shitlicks on the internet all night, and if you told me to get lost I’d probably end up convincing myself you were dying and have a panic attack while buying groceries we don’t need. Frozen pizza should never bear witness to that absolute debacle.”

“Don't _even_ mention pizza, yo.” Dave snuggles up against Karkat's chest, coincidentally in the ideal position to receive head scritches. “Pizza was the culprit. It killed my family, my digestive tract, and also tastes fucking disgusting coming back up. Think about licking the underside of a shoe, except the wearer has also been dancing in a nasty mashup of ketchup and velveeta. Then make it ten times worse, and that is what my stomach soup tasted like. Just so you know.”

Karkat squints at Dave--or rather, the top of Dave’s head, since he’s essentially melted and poured himself over Karkat’s middle. That lessens the impact of his patented Look somewhat, but oh well.

“The pizza that got left out all day, collecting bacteria in hopes of becoming a beautiful petri dish? The pizza I intended to throw out before it started to develop a stylish fur coat of mold? That pizza?”

“No, Karkat, the secret pizza I ordered and swallowed whole behind your back. Yes that pizza, I can’t believe you’re interrogating me when I’m on my deathbed. You cruel bastard.”

Why the fuck would someone eat food that might make them sick, unless they had to? Karkat’s dealt with his fair share of dubious food, when he was stretching the last of his caegars through the light season, but _now?_ They didn’t need to ration, let alone eat two slices of funky pizza that had been left to sit on the counter for fuck knows how long. (They’d plowed through one whole pizza and nearly finished another, before playing video games until Karkat was so tired that there was no way he could stay awake. It had been three or four days since he’d last slept properly, alright, and Dave must have forgotten to put the leftovers up).

“Why though. Did a famine sweep the continent while I was unawares, or do you just habitually play digestion roulette? There are other ways to thrill-seek, crotchrag.”

Dave shifts a little and grumbles under his breath, quiet enough that Karkat can’t pick out the words. Fucking, of course, Karkat, you rude piece of shit. He’s _sick,_ he probably knows he fucked up. Beating him over the head with it is completely unnecessary. Karkat bites back a well-intentioned rant about basic food safety and stashes it in his back pocket for a time when one of them isn’t suffering the consequences of terrible eating habits.

Maybe after he talks to some other people to figure out if he’s got a legitimate reason to be upset, or if he’s just being an intolerant douche. Both of these are distinct possibilities! He’s an awful person pretty much constantly, so gauging if this food thing is just Karkat wallowing in his usual mire of jackassery? It’s not easy.

He gets Dave to finish the glass of water before he falls asleep, and Karkat fucks around on his phone for a bit before eventually slipping out from underneath Dave. Of course, as soon as he does, Dave’s up again and blinking blearily at him. He sleeps lighter than anyone Karkat’s ever met.

“...My mouth tastes like rancid ass.”

“That would probably be because of all the bile you swished around your teeth earlier,” Karkat says, reaching over to run his fingers through Dave’s hair, “I’ll get you another glass of water.”

“You don’t have to, I’ll probably pass out again in a few minutes anyway.”

“I know, it’s my good deed for the night.”

It only takes a few minutes for Karkat to fill the cup with water from the sink in the ablution block, but by the time he gets back, Dave has made a nest out of the blankets and is dozing as predicted. Karkat doesn’t wake him up, but he does put the water on the nightstand in case Dave wakes up later and his mouth still tastes like someone pissed in it. It’s hard for Karkat to be properly angry at him, when he’s letting himself be vulnerable like this in front of someone. Stupid jackass. Karkat’s going to have to prepare one hell of a tantrum, later, to make up for not giving Dave a piece of his pan right away. Assuming he isn’t growing pizza parasites in his gut and is living on borrowed time, of course.

* * *

 

Karkat manages to reign in his cluckbeast lusus act a few days later, once Dave starts making pointed comments about not being helpless. It’s not easy, he keeps wanting to bring Dave water or soup or any other number of stupid, sappy things. The knowledge that Karkat would bristle just as much if their roles were reversed is the only thing keeping him from jamming his foot into his ever-gaping maw and chowing the fuck down. Well. That and the fact that Dave brought this upon himself by refusing to let spoiled food go to its rightful grave in a landfill. _God,_ why would someone do that?

Of course, this is the same dude who didn’t want to finish his ramen and stashed it in the fucking closet to save for later. Karkat knows this dark secret because he decided to clean it out (best to keep busy so he doesn’t succumb to the urge to fuss like a wiggler with their first palecrush) and discovered the foul remnants of a noodle cup tucked next to some shoes.

Absolutely disgusting.

Right now, though, Karkat’s looking at some of the plants Jade left for them. One of them’s gone a weird shade of yellow, and he’s no botanist, but he’s pretty sure plants aren’t _supposed_ to do that. Good job, Karkat confirmed for disgrace to sentient life, of course he can’t even keep a plant alive. Now the question is, does he wait until Jade comes over next and disappoint her, but find out what he did wrong, or does he throw it out now and just tell her it was a lost cause for him to take care of something like this in the first place? Dave definitely doesn’t know what to do; he grew up in a hivestem, there was even _less_ nature around him. Ugh.

Karkat would likely have stared at the plant and wondered what to do until he’d worked himself up into a frothing tantrum, but his palmhusk starts buzzing in his pocket before he can get momentum for a proper spiral going. He fishes it out of his pocket and goes to sit down in the recreationblock to see which jackass is nagging him this time.

It’s the jackass currently living with him, which is definitely the preferred outcome. Thank the horrorterrors it wasn’t John, because fuck knows Karkat’s blood pressure can’t take his nonsense on most nights, and especially not when it interrupts a shitfit in the making. There is no stopping a shitfit when John’s talking to him, no, it just ends with the both of them caked in manure and Egbert laughing like a douche because _ha ha it’s so funny to push the tantrum buttons--_ anyway. Fucking hell, one conniption gets preempted and Karkat immediately works himself up into another one, good going, douchenozzle. He rubs his temples and sighs. This is stupid.

His palmhusk vibrates again, and Karkat manages to open it without going down another frustration tangent to see what Dave wants.

\--turntechGodhead  [TG] began pestering carcinoGeneticist  [CG] \--

  
  
TG: put down whatever youre doing my beautiful buttslave  
  
TG: somethings just come up and it requires you to full ass this convo just as hard as i am  
  
TG: grinding your buttcheeks against the screen with the force of a thousand stampeding elephants

...Okay. Okay, this is fine, it’s probably nothing _too_ serious, Dave wouldn’t be talking about Karkat’s ass this much if he wanted to break up with him. Inhale. Exhale. Even if he wants space, wants to move out, even _if_ he wants something like that he still likes Karkat enough to flirt with him. It’s fine. Karkat wills himself to be fucking chill for once and starts typing.

CG: OK, I’LL TAKE THIS INCREDIBLY LOW-QUALITY BAIT. AT THIS POINT IT’S PROBABLY JUST A HOOK YOU’RE DANGLING IN FRONT OF ME, LIKE  
  
CG: “SEE THE METAL BARBS? THEY’RE DELICIOUS I PROMISE.”  
  
CG: BUT HEY! IT’S SHINY AND I’M DUMB, I’LL BITE. WHAT’S UP?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was about 50% more sickfic than I intended.
> 
> Alright, next chapter is The Talk, and not that daytime television show. Thank you so much for reading, and please let me know if you have any questions or comments!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, everyone! This chapter is a doozy at a little over 5,000 words, so it took me a while to write, and Polyswap in the middle took priority. (You should all go check out the polyswap fics, if you like three or more people being in love. It's good shit). Anyway, thanks for bearing with me! <3
> 
> This chapter is The Talk, and I'd like to stress that this isn't an ideal conflict resolution scenario. It's very much the blind leading the blind; Dave and Karkat are both mentally ill, traumatized teenagers who don't have access to a lot of resources, so they're kind of guessing and hoping for the best.

“Okay, so, um,” Dave says, ever the picture of eloquence, “let’s pour through the fine print on this contract and seal it in blood.”

They’re both sitting on the couch, backs against the arms so they can face each other. It’s been their go-to Serious Discussion Position for longer than they’ve been an item, almost since they first got stuck together on the meteor. No sense fixing what isn’t broken, right? And this way if one of them starts to flip their shit, the other is within immediate papping distance. There’s pretty much no other way either of them would have successfully communicated _anything._ Dave’s also serious about wanting to touch Karkat’s ass, although he’s being a gentleman and waiting until they’re done talking about stuff.

“First order of business,” Dave says, cracking his knuckles, “is your Laundry Thing. And other weird things, but I’m excusing them for the moment because they're less time-consuming. And I know _all_ about chowing the fuck down on a tasty time sandwich. Or, fuck, time taco would’ve been better, with the alliteration and shit. Anyway, jesus christ. Bear your psyche to me, I will actually not be a dick about it, promise.”

Oh, hell no. Karkat refuses to be interrogated, at least not _first;_ he visibly flinches--dude’s expressive as shit, and twice as dramatic--before scowling. “And why, pray tell, do you get to flay open my disgusting mutant pan first?”

“‘Cause I brought it up first, which means I win at not being an avoidant douche, which means you get to lay yourself bare first and I get to bask in not ignoring the problem for once.” Dave smirks. Biting the bullet when it comes to conversational shit has its benefits, fucking txt it.

Karkat makes a disgruntled chittering noise and crosses his arms, but he looks at Dave expectantly anyway. He’ll spill the fart niblets in the interest of working this out like mature adults, but he’s (almost) _eight,_ not ten or twelve, and he's going to make Dave work for his information. (Not to mention he doesn't know exactly what Dave wants to hear. Karkat knows his shit isn't normal, but there's “weird” and there's “distressing to the point of having a Talk” and he's not sure where to draw the line).

“Well?”

“Uh.” Dave mulls over what he's going to say for a moment. A healthy dose of forethought never hurt anyone, especially not someone with chronic diarrhea of the mouth. “Maybe like...explain why you take so long? ‘Cause even when I’ve got gnarly stains in my tighty whities--oh fuck, scratch that, I meant my white shirts not fucking _skid marks_ in my _underwear_. Fucking christ, okay, I mean there's _nothing_ I’ve had to wash that's taken that long, and I’ve been doing my laundry for like...ever, yo.”

Okay. That’s something to work with. Karkat inhales and picks at the hem of his sweater.

“It’s--hah, fuck. This is so dumb, I can’t believe I have to walk through my fucking laundry process, this is the stupidest problem. I’ve taken the very concept of first world problems and distilled it into its basest, most potent elements, and--fucking, there I go. I swear to your miserable, blighted human christ that I will stay on topic. The topic, which is laundry.” Karkat’s stalling; he knows it, Dave knows it, the couch probably knows it.

But Dave stays quiet, otherwise his motor mouth will start going too, and they’ll never end up getting anywhere. He raises his eyebrows and waits for Karkat to keep going.

And, of course, Karkat can’t shut up for long enough to effectively stall at _anything_. Silence is not his forte and both of them resort to blabbering when they’re nervous. Ugh. Well, maybe he can try to get this part over as quickly as possible? It is a desperate, unlikely hope, but a man can dream.

“Okay, so, shit gets dirty. So I take them, and I check everything for stains, right? Because what kind of pandamaged moron wants to leave a literal advertisement of what a useless slob you are? Not this pandamaged moron, that’s for sure.”

“But everything you wear is black, it’s like, the secret stain-hiding fabric--actually, never mind. I’m shutting myself up for the greater good of mankind, and also this conversation.” Dave folds his hands in his lap, the very image of a good listener. It’s even mostly sincere! Karkat snorts.

“So then I soak everything that looks like it might be stained in cold water, and then I have to treat all those, scrub the stains, and then it goes into the machine. After it’s washed I have to check everything again to make sure it doesn’t look stained before I dry it in for all eternity. If something does, I start over. There, does that satisfy your, all-consuming curiosity? Now may I wash my underwear in peace?” He’s pissy, he knows it, but it’s hard not to be defensive when it feels like he’s being scolded for something as mundane as _laundry._

Dave’s lips are a thin line, and he steeples his fingers underneath his chin in thought. “Hm.”

“Hm what.”

A tiny smile spreads on Dave’s face. “Oh, now _you’re_ getting on _me_ for saying hm! I see how it is. I know what you’re about. You can dish the pondering noises but you can’t take ‘em, for fucking shame, dude.”

“Take your smug expression and shove it up your wastechute so it can rejoin the rest of your head.” Karkat says, but he’s laughing despite himself. “We’re trying to have a serious conversation! I hate you.”

“Alright, I can be serious, dude.” Dave shifts on the couch so his feet are in Karkat’s lap and cocks a brow at him. “Survey says: that’s weird as shit.”

“Oh, really? I never would have guessed, clearly I should leave this in the hands of the scientists.”

“Nah, dude, we need your lived experience for that sweet, sweet accurate data. So lemme hit you with a fastball. Why do you care so much about stains? Like, obviously they’re not a great look, but you’re one of the least fashion-forward dudes I’ve ever met, and you take more care not to have stains than _Kanaya_ does. I mean, probably? I dunno her laundry habits.”

Fuck. This...this isn’t a line of questioning Karkat wants to think about, because it means thinking about _himself_ and how awful he is and how much he hates himself longer than is strictly necessary. He breathes.

“I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just a quirk of my charming personality!”

“Bullshit.” Dave’s one of the most conflict-averse people Karkat’s ever met, so when he says that and matches his no-nonsense tone with a level stare, Karkat flinches. Jesus.

“Dave, I…” Karkat feels his face burning. He glances away, focuses on that one wilting plant in the corner. “This isn’t, like, a fun topic. It’s not gonna be ‘oh, haha, when Karkat was a wiggler he got teased for wearing a stained shirt, let’s all laugh so hard we choke on our own spit!’ I don’t do this because I _want_ to. This isn’t happy funtimes for me, I don’t enjoy making you think I’m even more of a freak!”

Shit, shit, shit. Okay, it’s time to activate Pap Position Alpha. Dave bends his legs and sort of shuffle-crawls into Karkat’s lap, already shooshing him, limbs going all over the place. He cups Karkat’s face in his hands. Calling bullshit wasn’t supposed to take them into panic town _this_ fast, and the guilt is already nipping at Dave’s stomach. What even is socializing like a normal fucking person? Sounds fake.

“Trust me, bro, I figure we could decorate our whole house for Halloween just with all the skeletons we got in our mutual closets, I’m ready for unfun shit.” Dave strokes his thumbs over Karkat’s cheekbones. “You’re not a freak. I don’t think you’re a freak. I think--I think you’ve seen some shit, and that fucking sucks because, god, I care about you a lot and I want you to be happy. You know? So if this is making shit worse, we can, uh, stop. I’ll live without snuggletime, I--”

“No. This is a good idea.” Karkat leans forward to rest his head in the crook of Dave’s neck. “I don’t, um. Fuck, this is going to sound pretty goddamn pathetic, fair warning.”

“I’ll keep the pity party in my back pocket until judgement has been passed.”

Karkat inhales; his nose is pressed kind of awkwardly into Dave’s neck, and his breath probably tickles, but something about Dave’s smell (his skin, his body wash, his clothes) registers to Karkat’s panicking hindbrain as “safe.” This is fine. Dave is here, Dave is listening and not laughing at him, Dave has his own embarrassing habits. It’s. Fine.

“It's my blood. It always comes back to my fucking blood, doesn't it? Karkat Vantas, seven and a half sweeps old, _king of his entire species,_ and he still can't get over the shit chugging through his veins!” Karkat’s laugh is a little hysterical, shit. Dave reaches up to comb his fingers through Karkat’s hair but doesn’t shush him; this is ...good, even if it doesn’t exactly make sense right now, this is good. Better grab some headlamps, they’re getting to the bottom of this well.

“You’re gonna have to enlighten me on what that’s got to do with obsessively washing your clothes, man, I’m not a good enough detective to puzzle this one out.” Dave kisses him right between his horns, and allows himself a private smile when Karkat chirps.

“God, okay, it’s almost easy to forget you’re a hornless phallus baboon sometimes. It’s, like… human blood turns that fucking disgusting brown color when it’s dry, right?”

Dave nods. Doesn’t think about countless bloody noses, sliced arms, worse. Doesn’t think about Dirk, his brother not-his-brother same-but-different, covered in blood from a fatal wound Dave inflicted. Now is not the fucking time, brain. Not over something this dumb.

Even as Karkat's tamping down his own meltdown, he notices. He’s memorized Dave’s tells by now, could spot him tensing up at fifty paces. He leans back and cups Dave’s cheek gently, like his skin is made of paper and he has to take extra care not to hurt him. (Like he’s worth being taken care of). (He’s worth so, so much and Karkat wants to show him that. Even if his ridiculous broken pan and various neuroses make it really _fucking_ hard sometimes).

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, dude, I’m fine. Just a few ‘nam flashbacks is all. Can't get me to quit so easy.” Dave’s a little shaken up, but he _is_ fine and he's not going to put off another conversation that they need to have. They're avoidant enough as it is.

“If you say so.” Karkat's...a little skeptical, yeah, but he's learned by now that second-guessing Dave is about as effective as when Dave does it to him. He clears his throat.

“Well, uh. Troll blood doesn't do that? The color changing thing. It's why crazy highbloods could make their disgusting fucking technicolor murals. So, like, my blood wouldn't...it isn't...one scrape is basically a neon ‘CULL HERE’ sign.”

“Keep going, man, I’m listening.”

“So I had to get _really fucking good_ at making sure _nothing_ was ever stained. Because what if I missed a stain or scraped myself and didn't notice, and that was the day some casteist neighbor saw me? And then I’m meeting the wrong end of a culling fork. Both ends are the wrong end, by the way!”

Karkat runs his hand through his hair and laughs, voice catching. “And it sounds so _logical_ like that, like, no, Karkat's not shithive maggots looneypants! He’s _cautious._ But it's not! fucking! logical! To have a panic attack because you messed up and now you have to start over, just to make sure, even though you're exhausted and your hands hurt from scrubbing and half your bodily fluids have been replaced with bleach! It's not logical to _still_ be scared of what could happen if you do it wrong! But logic doesn't matter to my stupid broken fucking pan that can't figure out that I’m safe. I don't feel safe, unless I do it right.”

Dave...doesn’t know what to say to that. He _knows_ shit was fucked up for Karkat, back on fuckball murderplanet, but they don’t _talk_ about it. Just like Dave doesn’t talk about what it was like growing up, well. Growing up the way he did. And he expected some sort of weird brainfucked bullshit to be at the root of it, because what _isn’t_ caused by brainfucked bullshit when it comes to the two of them? But this is, like. Damn.

And, shit, shit, Karkat’s crying now, too, pink tears running down his cheeks. Karkat looks away and bites his lip to keep from blubbering like a wiggler who stubbed his toe--talking about shit is hard enough, _he will not show weakness._ Or. Any more weakness, damn it. It’s bad enough when talking about it makes his throat close up and his pumpbiscuit hammer like he really is being chased by culling drones, he doesn’t need the dose of shame from Dave seeing him lose his shit.

Dave doesn’t say anything. Acknowledging he’s freaking out right now will only make it worse, and he really does not want Meteor Screaming Match 2: Earth C Boogaloo. Instead, he rubs circles on Karkat’s back, and employs his incredible ‘muttering vaguely soothing nonsense’ skills.

“I’m sorry, you don’t need me getting my disgusting fluids all over you.” Karkat sniffs and wipes his nose with his sleeve. Heh, gross.

“Nah, dude, I’m all about those fluids! Bathe me in a shower of Karkat juice--” Dave pouts when Karkat rolls his eyes. “No but for real, man. I didn’t wanna like, make you leaky. In an unsexy way, at least. That’s pretty much the opposite of my goals at all times. I want this Karkat leakproofed tighter than a fucking navy vessel.”

“It’s fine.” Karkat’s voice is still thick, but he’s looking at Dave again, at least. “I just, fuck. I hate being _scared_ all the time. I’m essentially god! You’re literally god! No one could send culling drones after me if they _tried,_ and even if they did or could you’d take them out. And I still fucking...I have to do all this stupid shit anyway, because if I don’t what if I die, or even worse! What if you die? Or you have to see me die, or--fuck. I just. I hate it. I know it doesn’t make any sense, and at this point it isn’t even survival instinct it’s just me being _spectacularly_ nuts. But I still have to do it because at least when I’m scrubbing the same shirt five times and my hands hurt it still feels better than when I don’t.”

“Fuck, man. I didn’t know it was this bad. I kind of thought it was just you being weird and nitpicky about your space, jesus.”

“It feels like I’m gonna die, Dave. No, scratch that! It feels like I _am dying_ when I don’t, I can’t fucking breathe and I can’t think except ‘what if what if what if’ like one of your shitty records.”

“God, I’m sorry, dude. I wouldn’t have pushed it at all if I knew, maybe this was a bad idea? We can...we can scrub this from the record books if you want, pretend it never happened, the whole shebang.”

“No. It was...It wasn’t bad, um. I mean, flipping out in front of you isn’t _good,_ but. Talking about it instead of performing my traditional dickhead dance of ‘everything is fine’ is better than bottling it up, probably, and it was bothering you anyway. It’s, ugh. I don’t want to live like this, with my head constantly up my ass in terror. You know? And.” Karkat scrubs his eyes and fixes Dave with a look that manages to be pretty fucking impressive even if his face is blotchy and his nose is running. “We’re only halfway done, so there. You don’t get out of this so easily, fuckhead. Your turn. Make with the emotional breakdown, chop chop.”

Dave smiles ruefully and puts his hand to his forehead as though he’s going through a fainting spell.

“Oh no, I’m trapped.” Dave laughs but he’s. He’s a little nervous. Karkat doesn’t _like_ showing emotions that aren’t anger, but he’s still at least marginally more willing to cry in front of people. Dave doesn’t if he can absolutely help it, it’s something he’s working on, but the road they’re gonna go down is littered with broken swords and fractured bones.

“You’re not trapped, you unbelievable wiggler.” Karkat paps his face and gives him a watery smile. “You’re the one sitting on me, for fuck’s sake! _I’m_ trapped. This discussion? It ends as soon as you say ‘shit, Karkat, I dun wanna talk about this no more.’”

Karkat’s exaggerated impression of Dave’s voice and accent gets a genuine chuckle out of him. God. He is _such_ a good boyfriend, he gets it like no one else had/has/will ever get it, it’s fucking magical. Dave loves him so much he could just climb into his shirt and live there, like an oversized koala. For now, he just settles for pressing his nose into the wiry hair between Karkat’s horns and smiling where no one can see.

“Alright, dude, I guess we can take this train outta the station. Kinda wondering if I should be pulling the emergency brakes on your account, though. Yes, hello, 911? There’s this guy on the train and I’m pretty sure he’s dying but he doesn’t want anyone else to be late, so he’s being all stoic and shit. Yes, he _is_ too cute to die, how did you know?”

“Fuck you,” Karkat says, without malice, “I’m fine.”

Dave leans back and raises an eyebrow at him.

“I’m fine enough to listen to your various neuroses, you sack of barkbeast shit. If you ask one more time I’m going to climb up to the roof and fling myself off so I don’t have to deal with you worrying fucking constantly.”

“Alright, alright, point taken.” Dave pauses. “Uh, wanna give me some pointers? Kinda in the same situation ‘s you with the whole ‘dunno where to start’ thing.”

“Ugh, yeah, okay.” Karkat clears his throat and thinks for a moment. “Why do you, like, stash shit all the time? It’s really gross, man, and you don’t eat half of it.”

“It’s like...fuck, dude, never know when you’re gonna run out of groceries, right? Gotta save a snack stash in the event the fridge runs out.”

Karkat squints at him. Dave looks away and laughs a little nervously. Fuck, his face is so red, he can feel it.

“We do know when we’re going to run out of groceries, because I check our inventory regularly and so do you. I mean, fuck, we’ve rationed long enough, like hell I’m going to go back to eating dubious cholerbear meat when I don’t have to! And there’s another thing! You _knew_ how long that pizza had been out, and you--”

Karkat realizes all at once that Dave has been curling progressively further into himself the longer Karkat goes on with his impromptu shitfit, and clamps his mouth shut. He is so _stupid._ Yelling at him never fucking helps, but Karkat is a hemorrhoid on the sweaty, unwashed asshole of this planet, so he keeps doing it anyway. Christ.

He is the actual worst.

“Sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you, my shit doesn’t make sense either.” Karkat inspects his claws. “If you wanna stop it’s fine, that was so uncool of me I think the polar icecaps just fucking melted.”

Dave considers getting up and leaving for a few moments, but eventually he scoots back into Karkat’s lap.  
  
“It’s okay.”

“Okay. Sorry. Fuck, okay. Explain your shit--if you want to!--and I’ll shut my yawning squawkblister for once in my blighted fucking life.”

“You’re such a dumbass, man,” Dave says, affectionately. He rubs the back of his neck and chews on his words for a moment. A Strider? Thinking before he speaks? Say it ain’t so!

“I know we don’t talk about it much, but like. We all know both of us had fucked up childhoods. Wigglerhoods. Whatever.”

“God, yeah, I know.”

“Right. So, um. You had food problems too, but my problems weren’t the same. Like...you didn’t always have food because of your-your blood, and going outside too much coulda been a one-way ticket to cullsville, right?”

Karkat raises an eyebrow, but stays silent as he nods. Not running his trap is hard, but this is _important._ It’s so difficult to get Dave to talk about anything, it’s like trying to coax a squeakbeast out of its hole, and if he says the wrong thing (again) Dave _will_ get up and leave.

“For me, it was like...this fuckin’ sadistic game. Will Bro spend his hard-earned pornbucks on food this time around? How long will it last if he does? Is the can opener mysteriously going to relocate to the roof? We just don’t know!”

Dave presses his lips together into a thin line. His eyes are watering, but he kept his shades on his face, so the usual accompanying anxiety spike isn’t going straight to ‘full-blown panic attack because oh shit people can see me having expressions.’ Karkat cups his cheek, _so_ exceedingly gentle for a species made out of sharp edges and raised for violence, and Dave lets out a shuddering breath.

“Growing up, food wasn’t something I just got to _have,_ man. I got it as a reward or as part of some sort of mysterious, ironic ploy, and if I fucked up all the cabinets would be cleared out by the next day. Sometimes even if I _didn’t_ fuck up. I think he did it to keep me on my toes or some other ninja bullshit. It sucked, I hated it, I was hungry _all the time_ and the piece of shit was probably chowing down on steak every time I was in my room trying to figure out if ramen can expire!”

Karkat exhales and makes a noise Dave has fondly labelled “pissed off cicada bitching.” It’s a much-needed reminder Karkat’s here, and that Karkat who grew up in what was basically a planetwide gladiator match is angry over this. God. _God._ It’s so absurd, Dave laughs helplessly.

He...hmm. Karkat’s a little concerned at that, actually; it’s not Dave’s normal snorting laughter when he finds something so funny he can’t stifle it, it’s bordering on a sob. Karkat takes his face in both hands and looks him in the eyes. Or, close enough. He’s not going to take Dave’s shades off without permission, especially not when he’s upset. That’d be about as smart as harassing a sleeping cholerbear, which is to say so spectacularly stupid that an amoeba would think better of it.

“Dave?”

Oh. Shit, it’s definitely bad form to start crylaughing at random while you’re dumping your various emotional problems on your boyfriend. Dave pushes up his shades to rub at his eyes and takes a steadying breath.

“Sorry, dude. I just started thinking about how you’re from, like, a planet where you fuckers literally _eat babies_ and think that’s normal, and here you are, and you think my shit is fucked up. Even though you come from hell: the planet: the experience. That’s so ridiculous, man! You know?”

“...Did you want me to tell you it wasn’t fucked up?” Karkat replays the conversation in his head, tries to think of what he did wrong, and--

“No! No. Unless you actually don’t think it was fucked up? I don’t want you lyin’ to me about that stuff man, you know, to spare my feelings or whatever. So if you think I’m being a huge baby shitting in his baby diaper just tell me, yo.”

“I think it was fucked up! I do, I’m not going to dance around the topic to protect your fucking ego. You’re not a wiggler, Dave.” Karkat pauses. “Well, I mean, you _are_ a wiggler essentially always and it causes me nigh-goddamn-endless torment, but you’re not being one about this.”

Dave raises his eyebrows and smiles, just a little. “We are two huge babies some moron put in charge of a nation of homicidal grey people. Truly this will be a fascinating social experiment.”

Karkat raises an eyebrow. “Trolls here are only as homicidal as humans are, shitsponge.”

“That’s the secret. I’m making some fuckin’ _cutting_ social commentary here, dude, get on my level.”

“Wow, get fucked,” Karkat says, flatly. Dave grins at him.

After a moment, Karkat looks at Dave, serious again. It would be easy to keep bullshitting, it’s the easiest thing of all. But. They _gotta_ work on this. Karkat’s tired of feeling like he’s stepping on glass and pretending that it won’t eventually break. They gotta reinforce that shit. Or something; metaphors are hard post-freakout, okay.

“Wanna put the shining capstone on this monument to stupidity and communication failures?” And Karkat’s bad metaphors continueth.

“How do we even, like, decide if we’re done? I’m cool with going but, like, do we just talk until we hit some catharsis orgasm? Until we fix our problems?”

“I don’t know? Uh. Did you have anything you wanted to keep talking about?” Karkat’s shooting for casual, but his eyebrows are drawn together and he’s worrying his bottom lip. Dave appreciates the effort, though. They are two cool dudes.

“Nah, I’m good.”

“Oh. Er, fuck, okay.”

They sit in silence for little bit.

And then a little bit longer.

And then a little bit--oh, god damn it. Dave sighs explosively. Fuck. This.

“Actually, you know what, I did have some more shit to say.” He’s said a lot of shit to Dirk, before, and danced around it some with Karkat, but. It was stupid to think one conversation would be like waving a magic trauma wand that would erase thirteen years of mindfuck. Like, it _helped,_ hell yes it helped, but he’s not _done._

“I’m so fucking tired of being scared, dude. He’s dead, you know? I saw him dead. But he might as well have been a ghost in that fucking house anyway, the dickwad was never _around_ and when he was it was like me _seeing_ my goddamn guardian was some sort of cardinal sin. And it wasn’t like we could exactly go hog wild with food back on the meteor.”

Dave pauses to take a breath. “I just. I can’t take food for granted, man, I think about how wild it is that we can have takeout whenever _all the time._ It’s crazy! And who knows how long it’ll last?”

“Why…” Karkat rolls the words around in his head for a moment before saying anything. “Why do you think it’s not going to last?”

“It’s too good to last. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. I can’t...it’s not _safe_ to assume we’re always going to have enough to eat, because I never did before. Why would that be different now?”

Karkat opens his mouth to say something about how food is a basic fucking necessity and he will personally make sure Dave can stuff his face with anything he wants whenever he wants, but...that’s not going to work. Dave didn’t try to fix all of Karkat’s problems, even though Karkat’s issues pale in comparison to his, because it wouldn’t have worked. Tact is a thing that exists. He closes his mouth again until he actually has something fucking useful to say.

“Your lusus can get fucked and rot.” Useful. Constructive. Ten out of ten.

Dave laughs, a little weakly. “You can say that again. But fuck that, man, we’re like, adults basically? I think we count as adults given the shit we’ve been through. We make our own rules, buy our own food, solve our own problems. We are gods in this mother. Fuckin’. Realm.”

“You say that like we’re any good at any of that.” Karkat snickers, and the conversation lapses back into silence. There’s not really any definitive finale or climax, no sign that they’re done now. Karkat kind of thought they’d feel more done, that something would have Changed, some puzzle piece slotted into place. As it is, he isn’t really sure what to _do_ with any of the information he has now. Mostly he just has a migraine from all the crying and not sleeping he’s been doing.

“Should we...keep going?”

Dave raises an eyebrow at him. “I’m pretty sure I said my piece, dude, what else should we do?”

“I guess try to fix it, right? Figure out how to stop doing the same shit where we piss each other off in a mobius double reacharound of horseshit and avoidance.”

“I guess.” Dave yawns and puts his chin back between Karkat’s horns. “Kinda wanna take a nap, though.”

Dave’s tired. He feels cleaner somehow after crying, but it’s also not fucking _easy_ to talk about this shit, even with someone he loves as much as Karkat. It’s exhausting. Dave does _not_ want to sit and try and figure out how to solve their issues right now, if they even can be solved. No thanks, hard pass.

Karkat makes a protesting noise, but Dave kisses the base of one horn and shushes him.

“C’mon, babe, I know your brain is fried. This is like, ten times more intense than when you lose your shit at Dane Cook’s lumpy oatmeal mug, and you’re not exactly in your best form after that.”

“Yeah, but we can’t just take this and ignore it! Talking about it won’t solve the problem, Dave, in case you haven’t deduced that mysterious fact.”

“Nah, it won’t. But we know what the problem _is,_ so we can go lie down and maybe make out but definitely go the fuck to sleep, and then work on it in the evening. Promise.”

Karkat looks at him skeptically for a few moments. _God,_ though, he _is_ tired. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to fix it later. “I’m holding you to that. And I get to be the little spoon this time, or I’ll bite your shoulder every time you’re just about to fall asleep. Maybe this time he’ll let me sleep, you’ll wonder, as you close your eyes. But no! There will be no escape from my dental torment.”

Dave snickers and scoots back so he isn’t crushing Karkat under his gargantuan ass anymore. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to call this little ditty "how on earth do you write third person omniscient."
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! I hope that cleared up some things, and as always let me know if you have any questions. Next in the thrilling conclusion: the dingus gang tries to fix their problems.
> 
> (Please also feel free to hit me up on [my tumblr](https://felivey.tumblr.com/) if you'd rather ask questions there!)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finally finished! *throws confetti*  
> It's another behemoth chapter this time, just a head's up. I probably could have split it into two, but it felt lopsided that way and I'm much happier with it all as one huge chunk. Enjoy over 5k of these two dumbdumbs trying to fix their shit!

So Dave wakes up the next morning, and after marvelling briefly that Karkat is _actually asleep_ (and kind of snoring and blowing his gross, buggy morning breath in Dave’s face, but still) he remembers the conversation they had the night before. Aaaaaaaand. Hmm. He has no goddamn idea what to do about any of it.

He kind of wants to wait until Karkat wakes up to think about solutions, because Karkat is a goddamn perpetual motion machine and he _always_ has ideas for how to fix things. (Almost always). But he’s also got a blind spot the size of planet fucking Jupiter when it comes to anything that might make him a little less miserable. So! Dave will put on his Rose wig and cosplay and psychoanalyze the _fuck_ out of a solution. ...Or, uh, not, because that sentence is kind of fucking creepy in hindsight. Solutions will be had, though, freaky ectotwin Rose impersonation or not.

Asking an expert for advice is the way to start brainstorming ideas, Dave figures. So he grabs his phone and consults the famous Dr. Google. He doesn’t, like...he doesn’t know _shit_ about brains or psychology or, dare he say it, Trauma. Dave fucking hates that word, it makes shit sound so much more serious than he feels like it is, but that’s what it _is,_ isn't it? God damn.

Anyway. Research. Yes. He’s gonna research this problem so hard it’ll have to tap out five minutes in, it'll have to _retire,_ and Dave’s gonna be in the will anyway because he’ll know it better than anyone ever has.

 

* * *

 

Dave is seven topics deep into an inescapable wikipedia dive when Karkat wakes up. He’s found a few interesting tidbits that might help, but right now he’s reading about the oldest known life on Earth. Old Earth, obviously, this planet’s evolution is something he and Jade played with like it was their own personal lego kit.

Karkat stretches his arms above his head, yawns so wide Dave’s a little surprised his jaw doesn’t just unhinge like a fucking snake, and mumbles something in Alternian while looking at Dave with half-lidded eyes. Damn, well-rested Karkat is cute Karkat. Dave puts down his phone so he can lean over and kiss his cheek, smiling against Karkat’s skin when a pleased chattering noise starts up in his chest.

After a moment, Dave leans back and raises his eyebrows at Karkat. “So. The Fixening of our Shit.”

The pleased noise dies. Karkat blinks at him before understanding dawns on his face, and then he rolls his eyes. “Let me at least wake up first, you overeager goddamn hopbeast. Not all of us like to finish things in thirty seconds or less.”

Dave pokes Karkat’s shoulder accusingly, laughing. “Wow, fuck you, dude! This is coming from the guy who I practically had to drag into bed last morning because he couldn’t take ‘we’re too tired to fix this’ as an answer. I see how it is. I see.”

Karkat snorts and sits up. “At least let me take a fucking piss first, dude, jesus. I’m not going to put up with our bullshit for fuck knows how long on a full bladder.”

A wise choice. Dave nods, still laughing quietly.

“Be free,” Dave says as Karkat gets up, and then at his back, “Can we do it on a full stomach, though?”

“Uh, duh.”

“Thank god. You understand my needs. I knew there was a reason I put up with you.” Dave sits up and throws off the covers. He could probably...fry an egg or two without burning them beyond recognition. And Karkat always wakes up faster when there’s hot food, so that's definitely an incentive, there.

Dave doesn't want to dig around in his grey matter without a proper breakfast, either. While Karkat's in the bathroom, Dave gets out of bed and makes his way down to their largely-decorative kitchen. It's kind of fucked up to have all this culinary equipment and not use it, but cooking is _hard_ and he's using it now, so that probably counts for something.

By the time Karkat gets downstairs--looking freshly-showered, “just” pissing Dave’s plush ass--the eggs are done. They decided halfway through they were going to be scrambled, but Dave’s pretty sure there’s no shell pieces in there, so he considers it a win. Toast and coffee were easy to add in comparison, and when Karkat sits down to a plate and steaming mug, his expression is totally worth it. Hell yeah. Dave is the best boyfriend, someone should give him a fuckin’ award.

“Why do I get the feeling you're trying to grease me up with congealed moobeast secretion?”

Dave chokes on his coffee. When he recovers, he looks incredulously at Karkat. What a phrase. Holy shit.

“I’ll get you plenty lubed up later,” Dave says, sitting down across from Karkat, “I just thought it would be easier to talk about our various and sundry issues if we had something other than sugary wood chips for breakfast.”

Karkat snorts and takes a long drink of his coffee. When he sets the mug back down, he raises his eyebrows at Dave expectantly. “So, what are your ideas? Unless you want me to go first so you can revel in your newfound cooking prowess.”

“Nah, lemme get this over with. I rehearsed a speech so many fucking times while I was cooking this shit. Gotta get it out fast otherwise I’ll bungle that shit before you can say ‘thinkpan.’”

 

* * *

 

Karkat's pretty...well, he's not _happy_ , he's never happy, but it's so much better than it was before. And they have a plan. A plan means Karkat can stop feeling like he has to fix it nownownow, means the anxious energy buzzing under his skin almost always can calm down a little. That's something you appreciate when you can get it.

The solution isn't exactly one he’s going to dance a merry jig over, but Dave’s not thrilled with his sentence either, so he can at least _try._

The solution being: let Dave wash the clothes, _all_ of them, and resist his frankly fucking absurd impulse to take over and do it right. After they'd had their Breakfast Strategy Meeting and talked about their slapdash plans, Dave had hit up Rose to see if there was anything glaringly wrong sticking out at her. Apparently not, and now Karkat's left with nothing to do about the knotted lump of dread and apprehension in his bilesack. Joy of joys.

“C’mon, dude.” Dave’s leaning against the doorframe to the utilityblock, balancing a full hamper against his narrow hips. “I mean, shit, you can go somewhere else if that'll help you not wig out? But if you _do_ flip seventeen different kinds of shit, I wanna be able to tell so I can knock it the fuck off. So, uh. Come on if you're coming, I guess.”

Karkat nods and follows him in. The utilityblock isn't exactly built for two grown-ass dudes shuffling around in there, but he slides into an out-of-Dave’s-way spot between the wall and the heated apparel tumbler. He sticks his tongue out when Dave looks over and laughs at him.

“It's like we're playing Karkat Tetris,” Dave says, more to himself than anything, and starts pulling clothes out of the hamper.

It's fine, for a few seconds. After a moment, Karkat's hands start itching, and he can feel his pulse start to quicken. Dave’s barely giving the clothes a cursory once-over for stains before he tosses them in the garment agitator, and when he _does_ find a stain, he simply gives it a couple quick spritzes of remover and puts it in with the rest. No cold water, no scrubbing, no double checking to make sure he got it all. It's wrong. It's not safe, he's going to miss something and there's going to be blood somewhere and _someone will see--_

“You okay, dude?” Dave glances over, and his shades are pushed up off his face so Karkat can see the concerned set of his eyebrows. (And his eyes, yeah. It’s never quite stopped making Karkat’s pumpbiscuit flop a little sideways, even if Dave thinks it’s stupid to get sentimental over it).

“I’m okay. It’s just...christ, I _really_ want to do everything over, it’s kind of making me flip my shit.” Karkat watches as Dave measures detergent into the little cup, and tries not to think about how he’s going to have to toss these clothes because any stains Dave missed _will_ be in there until the heat death of the universe.

“If you need to stop, we can stop. I don’t want to make you wig the fuck out, man. That’s like...the opposite of my goals pretty much all the time. I don’t even want to make you toupee out. No hairpieces of any kind will be out, here, is what I’m saying.”

Karkat sighs. It might be a little fond. “If we stop, do we just let me freak the fuck out and sit here scrubbing for an hour? Or will we be leaving the clothes in the agitator, untouched, until I stop being a neurotic little fuck? Spoiler, that will be never. My obnoxious antics are eternal.”

Dave purses his lips. This expression, which Karkat has dubbed “pensive jackass”, is minutely different from “cooldude jackass.”

“Hmm,” Dave says, looking at the laundry like it smashed every apple beverage in the hive and made him watch, “ _Hmm._ ”

“What.” Karkat makes an oath to never say hmm again, if it’s _this_ anxiety-inducing when he does. Jesus human christ careening around on a two-wheel device.

“Tryin’ to figure out what to do, s’all.”

“You could just finish washing the fucking clothes? And ignore my pointless, histrionic tantrums?”

Dave makes a face Karkat hasn’t come up with a nickname for. “I’m not going to sit here and watch you freak out and do nothing. Can you, I dunno, talk to me so I know to take a break if you start hyperventilating or something?”

Karkat snickers. “This is the first time anyone’s asked me _not_ to shut the fuck up, but yeah. I can do that.”

Dave mumbles a half-finished rap to himself and starts the wash cycle. Karkat’s breath hitches. Fuck, okay. That’s done. No going back, that whole set of clothing is ruined. Karkat scrambles to make a mental list of everything in there, so he can replace it next time they go shopping. Fuck.

Fuck.

“I’m kind of freaking out,” he says, hoarsely.

“How so?” Dave’s pretty good at hiding the concern in his expressions when he wants to, but Karkat’s lived with him too damn long not to pick up on his tells.

“I can’t wear those, it’s not safe.” The thought is already making his pumpbiscuit hammer against his thoracic cage.

“You’re safe with me, man, I got you.” Dave’s fiddling with knobs on the apparel tumbler; he’s done everything he needs to do, apparently (so fast!). Now he’s slowly edging towards Karkat, leaving plenty of time to run or say no or whatever. It’s _so_ nice. Too nice for someone who’s freaking out over laundry.

He doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve _Dave._

Karkat slumps down on the floor, still awkwardly wedged in between the apparel tumbler and the wall, and makes a low, miserable noise. He’s the _worst,_ he’s sitting here throwing a fit over something totally minor, and he’s making Dave pat his ass through all of it, and the turd cherry on top of the shitcake is that he _knows_ and he _still can’t stop._

“I _can’t_ wear those, I can’t, they’re _ruined_ and I’m making you put up with my irrational fucking _tantrums_ all the time. I know it bugs you, and I’m still doing it anyway! I don’t know why you even bother.”

Dave crouches in front of him and raises an eyebrow. “Because I like being around you?”

“It’s not worth it. I’m not worth it.”

“I think I get to judge how I spend my own damn time and who I spend it with, dude. Kind of a time god and all.”

“You have terrible taste.”  
“I mean, so do you.” Dave sighs and sweeps his bangs out of his face. “For real, though, I’m not going to regret dating you any time soon. I might be a little sad if you decided to live between the dryer and the wall for eternity, but I’d probably get over it. You’re worth all your baggage or whatever, Karkat. Fuck knows my shit could put a private jet over the weight limit.”

“It’s not fair to just...inflict my shit on you, though. There’s probably a thousand other fucks out there who have all my dubious charm _without_ the metric fuckton of baggage piled on top of your own.” He’s just dragging Dave down, forcing him to stick with someone who’s completely unable to function because they needed each other on the meteor and now Karkat can’t let go. He’s fucking disgusting.

Dave scowls, which is, yeah, a little jarring. “You’re not some fucking...you’re not a _part_ I’m going to go to the boyfriend store and just _replace,_ you fuckin’ asshole. I’m dating you because I like _you._ Not because I’ve got this list of traits I need and anyone who fits them works. Come on, you’re Mr. Romance Guy, you _know_ that’s not how shit works.”

Karkat sighs. “I know.”

“Then why are you trying to foist me off on some other dude or chick or whatever just because you’ve got some issues that happen to be kind of weird?” Dave sounds a little plaintive, fuck.

“It’s not that I don’t want you!” Karkat says hastily, putting one hand on Dave’s knee. “I just don’t. Get it? Why you want the sorriest sack of shit this side of the planet, I guess. Now that we’re not stuck with each other and all my fucking weird _problems_ are leaking everywhere.”

“Uh, because I like you.” Dave leans up against the tumbler and lifts his shades. “Because you get it, man, you get _me_ and _my_ shit and don’t sit there and look at me like I’m going to break whenever someone makes an off color joke or comes into a room too fast or whatever. Don’t make me list all the reasons I like you specifically, dude, we’ll be here forever.”

Karkat sniffles and looks at Dave, a watery smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I’m sorry I’m such a fucking nutcase.”

“All is forgiven. Because there’s, like, nothing to forgive.” Dave smiles back and offers him his fist, raised in what he calls a customary bro bump. Bunp. Whatever. Fucking SBAHJ.

“I’m gonna try and be normal about the clothes. It’s just going to be...really hard to wear them, I think.”

Karkat bumps his knuckles against Dave’s; Dave catches his wrist and leans in to kiss Karkat’s forehead. It’s a little slobbery.

“Dude. Don’t get your vile fucking oral secretions in my hair! Primates are disgusting and I hate you.”

Dave only leans closer, until he’s practically laying on top of Karkat. “You love my sweaty mammal ass.”

“As we’ve previously established, my taste is terrible and so are you.” Karkat’s smiling, though. His pump biscuit isn’t hammering quite so fast now. Yeah, the thoughts are still there, in some panicked corner of his pan, but it’s easier to push them away when Dave’s here, being obnoxious and cuddly and silly and Dave.

“You wound me,” Dave says, voice fond. “Anyways, you don’t have to wear them right away. We can stay inside all night when you do wear them, too, make sure nobody comes by. Ease you into it, you know? Instead of just tossing you to the cottony wolves.”

“Thanks.” Karkat smiles and nuzzles against Dave’s hair. “Move, lardass, you’re crushing me.”

“I am a delicate flower and couldn’t crush an ant if I tried.”

“You swing two-handed swords around like they’re made of paper, you fuck. You’re not exactly some trembling waif. I mean, externally, at least.” Karkat pushes at Dave’s shoulders, and up he goes, snickering. He _is_ a lot more slender than Karkat (damn near everyone is slender compared to Karkat), but it takes a lot of upper body strength to swing the swords he used. In Karkat’s humble opinion, Dave’s arms are, uh, pretty fucking nice. He’s spent some time looking at them.

Once Karkat’s standing up too, Dave hops up to sit on the agitator and glances over at him.

“You alright?”

Karkat sighs. He’s...rghhh, he’s itching with the urge to stop the wash cycle now so he can fix things. Maybe there’s a chance, right, if he gets everything out now and starts over, treats everything twice--no. God dammit.

“I need to do something that isn’t this. Right now.”

Dave nods. “We’ve got a stack of shitty movies with your name on them…?”

“No, man, I need to be _doing_ something, like actively engaging myself in some activity. I don’t care if we sit outside and make beautiful flower crowns and dainty little friendship bracelets for the next six goddamn hours, but I need _do_ something. Otherwise I’m going to flip my fucking shit and crawl up the walls trying to not fuck with the laundry.”

Dave pauses for a moment, before he snaps his fingers. “Let’s go harass John, we can bring him lunch and he can kick your ass at Mario Kart. I bet my sweet behind he hasn’t left his fucking hovel in, like, a week. He could use a well-meaning bitchfest, let’s be real.”

“It’s not a hovel, you insensitive shitsmear,” Karkat says, but he’s already grinning, “It’s obviously a _bunker._ A trash bunker for garbage people.”

 

* * *

 

It’s easier not to focus on how everything is ruined and something awful is going to happen when Karkat’s bossing someone around. They fail to lure John out of bed with hot food, but his will breaks when Dave threatens to smash cupcake into John’s hair. Karkat even manages not to freak out (much) when Dave leaves without him to change the laundry, and redirects most of his panic into screaming about how John’s a cheating fuck and that the Luigi Death Stare stopped being funny ten bad jokes ago.

By the time Dave gets back, the worry has faded from a crushing weight drowning out all other thoughts, to more of a prickle in the back of his pan. It’s okay. He’s gone out with his awful fuckoff-red eyes and no one cares, nothing’s happened even though he fucked up the clothes. Dave’s not making him wear anything from that load yet. It’s. Okay.

When they get back home, Karkat curls up in bed with Dave on laundry day for the first time. Dave looks the same as he always does when he’s sleeping, but it feels special anyway. He wanted this enough to have a Talk about it. Dave wanted _Karkat_ in his bed while he slept, of all people. Karkat smiles and fits himself against Dave’s side, closing his eyes.

 

* * *

 

It takes a while before Dave’s ready to dive into his pile of issues. And his piles of food. Eventually, Karkat makes him pick a day out in advance so he can’t “accidentally” arrange to meet up with John or Rose or Jade. Dave reminds himself that Karkat managed to let him do the laundry, even if he _did_ freak out about it; this is the least Dave can do in return.

It’s just...hard, kind of. (Haha, hard). Because this food is his _emergency_ stash, and Karkat doesn’t know where any of it is. Well. He’s found two, but that was by accident, and Dave hides things better now. He’s trying not to hide so many perishables, too, because “I’ll get that in an hour” turns into “I’ll get that tomorrow” turns into Karkat throwing a fit about slimy apple cores or some shit.

Anyway. The day eventually comes, because time continues to do its timey thing regardless of how tempted Dave is to rewind for an hour or a day or a week. When he shows up to drag Dave to cleaning hell, Karkat looks… fucking hilarious, actually. He’s got rubber gloves that go up to his _elbows_ and enough cleaning supplies to cover up a murder with.

“You ready?”

“Do you want the answer to that?”

Karkat rolls his eyes, his entire head tossing with the movement of it. “ _Yes_ I want the answer to that, you fucking stoic edgelord bastard, because I am _not_ going to make you do something you don’t feel comfortable with! I’ll just use my superior sniffnode to find the hiding place or something, scour the hive until you could put it in a magazine.”

Yeah, because _that_ doesn’t sound like a recipe for disaster. Dave takes the roll of trash bags and cocks an eyebrow at Karkat.

“Nope. Not enabling your weird thing, not letting you get stuck in a rut. Plus, no offense, bro, but I’m pretty sure a fuckin’ bloodhound couldn’t sniff out where I’ve hidden some of this shit. It’s like a goddamn bunker, only tiny and scattered all over the house. I’m ready for the apocalypse. Second apocalypse? Do we count the game as one or two? Three?”

The tangent ruse unfortunately fails to distact Karkat from the topic at hand. He is a man with his eyes on the prize. Dammit.

“I’d rather deal with my weird _thing_ than make you freak out. I’m not doing this unless you’re one hundred percent okay with it.”

“Oh yeah, ‘cause you were totally down when it was your turn. I’ll be fine, dude.”

Karkat looks unconvinced. Dave sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“I promise that I will _tell you_ if I start to freak out, and that we can stop until I’m done with my episode or whatever. Okay?”

Karkat’s expression softens somewhat. “Okay, fine. Lead on to the garbage trove, then.”

“Garbage troves, dude. Plural. I got a zillion of the things. It’s like the secret rooms in a murder mystery, except you pull back the special book on the shelf and five bags of chips fall out and hit you in the face. They expired like three years ago, which is the really horrifying thing, tee-bee-ache.”

Karkat groans, but he doesn’t look annoyed, not really. “Oh, joy of joys.”

“Strap in for the long haul, buddy, we’ve got so many months worth of my shit to dig through. I’d tell you exactly how many months, but frankly you’re already depressed enough without the crushing weight of my hoarding making it worse, so. Plus, I mean, what kind of surprise would it be then? Gotta let that suspense build, keep you wondering about how many kinds of mold I got lurking behind the paintings or whatever. The answer is all the kinds. It’s a goddamn mold zoo. You’re welcome.”

Dave talks when he’s nervous, which is a surprise to no one, but the anxiety making his stomach do kickflips lessens somewhat when Karkat puts a hand on his shoulder and chirps at him. The chirping is still so alien, it’s this weird mixture of cute and sweet and a little bit uncanny valley.

“Hey,” Karkat says, as quiet as he ever gets (not fuckin’ very), “You don’t have to. I mean, the image you just left me with is not a comforting one, but you don’t have to.”

That’s what spurs Dave on enough for him to show Karkat his hiding places, in the end. It still feels wrong, to lift the mattress and the boxspring up so the world can see the bags of chips he’s crammed against the slats of the bedframe. There’s no perishables here (Dave’s not _that_ stupid), and Karkat is clearly making an effort to keep his disparaging comments to a minimum. Thank god. Normally Dave doesn’t mind it, they pick at each other and they both know it doesn’t mean anything, but now… Nah, right now is not a good time for that. Dave’s got a horrible panicked urge to rewind and stop himself from fucking up like this, even though it wouldn’t change _this_ timeline, so he needs whatever help he can get. Keep his shit on lockdown.

“Dave?”

“Yeah?”

“You spaced the fuck out there for a second, I said I was gonna throw these out if it’s not gonna give you an aneurism? ‘Cause they’re all smashed and I’m worried some of them opened a little, and I really don’t want you eating them like that, so…”

“Oh, yeah, I mean, the pantry’s gonna overflow pretty damn quick if we decided to keep all the funky shit I’ve got around here. And I will get so much food poisoning. I’ll develop a new strand of food poisoning, uh, bacteria? Which, on the other hand, might be a boon to modern science, so maybe you should hand over the goods for the greater good, haha...oh.”

Oh, because Karkat’s put one finger over Dave’s mouth. Not grabbing, not holding him still, Dave could keep talking if he wanted; Karkat’s being careful. Goddamn. Dave feels his heart swell three sizes. Karkat doesn’t even have to try to memorize the various things he needs to do to make people feel better, he just _does_. For such an abrasive fucker, he’s. He’s a really good dude. Dave’s glad Karkat puts up with his dumb ass.

“You okay?”

“Peachy.”

“Dave, I swear to god.”

Dave runs a hand through his hair and looks up at the ceiling. “Not doing so hot, no. The idea of, uh. Showing you where I keep all my emergency food. Is priming me for a sick flip off the handle and into the deep end. Like, I mean, I know we’re not gonna run out of shit to eat, but I don’t _know,_ and it’s. Scary.”

Karkat sighs, but he doesn’t seem frustrated with Dave’s batshit antics. “Hey, man, you don’t have to show me _all_ of them. Tonight, at least. That’s kind of a ridiculous double standard, we didn’t say I have to stop being a fucking nutcase immediately, so you shouldn’t have to magically fix your shit right now either.”

Dave, hmm. Dave hadn’t considered that. He mentally runs through the list of where he keeps everything, tries to compare the best-stocked spots against which are the most well-hidden to decide which one to leave alone tonight. In his office (ha, he has an office, that’s so fucking weird), there’s this floorboard that comes up just enough for him to stash stuff under there, and he’s been pretty good about not putting anything that could stink up the joint there. Fuckin’ score, he’ll leave that one.

The panic roiling in his gut doesn’t quite _disappear_ , but the thought of keeping _one_ place safe, just in case, makes it manageable. Dave inhales slowly. Exhales, squares his shoulders, looks at Karkat and nods.

“Let’s cause this shit to transpire.”

The Great Cleansing is slow going, partially because Karkat is really fucking particular about his space and making sure everything is Just So (although Dave won’t let him linger too long on any one place), and partially because Dave has to keep taking breaks. He’s taking one of those breaks now, rubbing his temples while Karkat fidgets on the other end of the couch. The middle cushion is pulled up, revealing an embarrassingly large number of candy bars and squashed snack cakes and soda cans shoved where no one would see.

“This is so stupid,” Dave says, to no one in particular. Karkat looks up and raises his eyebrows at him.

“I mean, just think about it. I have crammed food into every conceivable space in this house--and it is a huge fucking house, dude, so that was no small task. And now that you’ve inevitably noticed the goddamn cheeto dust oozing out of the walls, I’m sitting here having a fucking crisis over it. That’s so _dumb._ I’m dumb.”

Karkat huffs and crosses his arms. “You’re not dumb. I mean, I get it. I _definitely_ had chips and shit stashed for when things got bad. It’s not a ridiculous impulse, especially not with your, uh. Stuff.”

Dave rolls his eyes and leans back on the couch. “You’re not the one stuffing fucking Monster into the couch and hoping no one sits on it, though.”

“No.” Karkat picks up a candy bar and starts gesturing with it, pointing it at Dave, who makes a valiant effort not to snicker. “But! It’s at least _sort_ of logical. At worst, you’re only as messed-up in the head as I am, which, yeah, isn’t exactly encouraging. But you seem to think _I’m_ not a lost cause despite all the evidence to the contrary, so you could at least extend yourself the same courtesy. And help me figure out what shit in here is salvageable.”

“Says the king of self-loathing,” Dave grouses, but he leans forward again anyway. While he’s at it, he takes the candy bar Karkat is still pointing at him, opens the packaging, and takes a bite.

“It’s salvageable.” Dave grins around his mouthful of (slightly stale) chocolate while Karkat stares at him in indignant shock.

“You are a rude motherfucker.” Karkat makes a big show of how put-upon and longsuffering he is, but Dave sees him smiling when he thinks Dave isn’t looking. He knows his fucking game. He sees.

“You ready to keep going?” Karkat shakes their latest trash bag for emphasis, packaging and food rustling. Dave shrugs.

“Don’t feel so much like warmed over shit, anyway. Wouldn’t say I’m gonna cream my pants over it, like, ‘oh goody I love housework!’ But I can handle a little more. We’re almost done, anyways.”

Karkat nods and tosses a pulverized zebra cake into the trash bag. “If you need to tap out, dude, let me know. We’ve done a fuck of a lot of work and I’m not going to go insane if we leave the rest for another day.”

“Nah.” Dave sets an energy drink aside, in the ‘keep’ pile. “If I quit now I’m, like, never going to get around to it. You know how I am. Gotta finish it tonight.”

Dave can feel Karkat working up into another paranoid ‘are you _sure_ you’re okay?’ rant, but when Dave turns and deploys one (1) whole sincere expression to smile reassuringly at him, Karkat closes his mouth. Smiles back, too, even though Dave can _see_ the gears turning in his head, can see how hard he’s working on not asking a million questions about feelings and are you sure, like really sure, like really really super sure.

Dave appreciates it. He can do this, he’s made it through shit a million times worse, but he’s not great at communicating his feelings at the best of times. Right now? Well’s fuckin’ run dry, Karkat’s just going to have to trust Dave to let him know if he needs a minute to flip the fuck out.

And Karkat does. They get through the rest of the night mostly without incident. As they toss the trash bags into the cans for pickup, a sort of relieved, clean feeling falls over Dave. It’s done. He surveys the bags of shit and smiles, Karkat looking more and more baffled by the minute.

“What are you grinning about, motherfucker? Did I finally break you?? Did we throw out the last of your marbles amongst the endless sea of garbage?”

“The marbles remain firmly locked in my skull, dude. All janglin’ around in there and shit. Nah, I just.” Dave pulls Karkat into a hug and sighs into his hair. “We did it, man. We climbed this whole mountain. We successfully resolved a conflict. Go us.”

Karkat leans back a bit to look at Dave, an incredulous smile spreading across his features. “Yeah. I guess we did. That’s kind of amazing.”

“Hell yeah.” Dave holds Karkat like that for a while, just sort of...basking in it. It’s not totally fixed, not by a long shot. He’s still definitely gonna put food under the bed sometimes, and he knows Karkat’s still nervous about wearing the clothes Dave washed, but. It’s better than it was. And that feels fucking _good._ It feels hopeful.

They can do this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can, in fact, get from the Wikipedia page on OCD to the page on Abiogenesis in seven clicks. Wikipedia is magical. Anyway, thanks for sticking with me this whole time, I appreciate it a ton! I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing it. <3


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